The Versatile Blogger Award

The Versatile Blogger Award. Pour moi? Well who knew? A blogging award after only five posts? Must be that new cologne (no, I don't wear cologne).

Although, now I have to pay my dues by linking back to the person who sent this my way, by outlining seven things about myself, and by rewarding five other bloggers with this same award.

So first up, a big thank you to Nicole Storey for passing this award on, it was very kind of her. Pssst, Nicole: I'll get the money and that "special object" to you as soon as it won't look at all suspicious in any way whatsoever, okay? Oh wait, inside voice!

Seven things you may or may not know about me (and which may or may not be true):

1. In the movie This Is Spinal Tap, I played a small part as a bass control button that only went to 9.

2. Koalas utterly terrify me.

3. Seeing the colour turquoise on a traffic sign makes me go temporarily deaf in one ear.

4. A distant relative once owned Stonehenge and lost it in a bet over how many toothpicks someone could hide in the Grand Duchess of Doncaster's cleavage.

5. I secretly wrote the major Shakepeare tragedy King Lear. Shhhh... I'm actually not proud of the typos in that one.

6. I once planned to gather a harem formed entirely of slightly irritable soccer moms. Sadly, at the last minute, I discovered a local bylaw prohibiting it.

7. Eerily, my fingerprints match up perfectly with those of actor Robert De Niro. As a result, I am considering framing him for a heinously spectacular crime, if only for some of his disappointing late-career roles.

Five worthy recipients:

Michael Edward ("Ed") McNally: Sable City

Yvonne Hertzberger: Yvonne Hertzberger

Patricia Carrigan: Patricia Carrigan

John Claude Smith: The Wilderness Within

Chuck Wendig: Terrible Minds

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Dreamscape (Transatlantic Version)

So, I was in London somewhere on the Thames Embankment and we were looking for a decent place to get coffee. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. A passerby pointed around a corner, by a bridge abutment and below a patch of grass, and we saw a tall, wooden ladder leading up into what looked like a child's tree fort. We proceeded to climb it, and just as I was able to see inside the building through the hatch, my companion started to slip and I grabbed her under her thin arms before she fell the entire way. She was panicked and I tried to soothe her. She was not exactly human, I noticed now; her head more canine, from which hung spindly arms and a body shaped like a cylinder. She had no lower limbs. Once she had calmed down and I'd pulled her through the hatch, she said, both apologetically and matter-of-factly, "there is not much to me, I'm just a head and one vital organ, probably a kidney," as we joined the cafeteria/canteen-style lineup/queue. I felt puzzled and mildly irritated.

© Art Nahpro, 2011It seemed to take forever; the proprietor—an unkempt and unattractive man—kept leaving his post at the cash register/till to attend to something fussy and seemingly unnecessary across the café and I could feel my patience stretch taut like a garotte. When it was our turn to pay, I attempted to hand him a ten pound note/twenty dollar bill, and once again he left to attend to whatever it was that was bothering him on the other side of the room, and although I planned to say something along the lines of "this is too long to wait to buy just coffee", once we were finally served I lost my resolve, paid up in silence, and walked over to the crude wooden picnic-style tables, nursing two steaming drinks. The coffee was not even particularly good, but as soon as I'd downed it, I realised I had somehow managed to eat the entire face of my companion as well, whose exposed foxlike skull was still smeared in globules of yellow fat atop her hollow tubelike body, all of her still twitching gently. My wet lips tasted of salt. Ashamed and quietly horrified, I left quickly, throwing her remains down the ladder into what was now a foggy London evening, scurrying after them like death's ugliest sibling.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Lifting All Boats 2

Next up is a book I already reviewed over at Amazon, so I don't want to repeat myself too much, but it's an impressive debut by another independent author. In fact, no, forget that, I think I will repeat myself and paste the review here, as I still stand by it:

"With Joe Café, author JD Mader unleashes a noir thriller heavy with character but light on the nihilism. Despite a harrowing and brutal opener reminiscent of A History Of Violence, this is a surprisingly thoughtful and even likeable book, as if the spinner of the tale were a fishing buddy releasing each choice detail over the course of a slow summer afternoon. Not that there's anything slow about the pace of this excellent novel; it is almost perfectly weighted, and for a novel in this genre, is not only emotionally satisfying but genuinely affecting. So what is it about? Well, the compellingly told story follows a resentful killer and his captive, a stripper, through a pursuit involving both colourful mobsters and one very morose law enforcement officer... which all sounds very stock-in-trade on the surface, and yet Mader breathes new life into these tired tropes, leaving the reader with some unexpectedly conflicting emotions. How do I say this more clearly? Okay. Personally, I don't remember the last time a crime/noir thriller left me with tears running down my cheeks. Therefore, I very much recommend this novel."

Here are a few details about JD Mader, whose future output I will be following keenly: Dan Mader is a writer and musician, but mostly a writer. He is 6'2" and 220 lbs. He wears a size 11.5 shoe. You can find more of his work at Unemployed Imagination.

He also leaves two spaces between his sentences thus forcing me to edit his bio. His blog is well worth following and, if you insist, this is what the dude looks like:

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Lifting All Boats

So, true to my word, time to talk about someone else... more specifically, fellow writers who deserve exposure.

What have I been reading lately?

Well, in between all the work that accompanies the promotion of my own tiny piece of this much larger puzzle, not to mention the writing itself, I do try to read stuff written by others.

First up, I just finished a very strange collection written by the prolific and multi-talented K. S. Brooks and a dude with the pleasing name of Newton Love. I use the word "strange" here in an approving sense, since the book is titled Odd & Odder: A Collection of Sensuality, Satire and Suspense, so it would have been, um, odd if it weren't strange, if you get my drift. And besides, strange is my own stock in trade, really.

Anyway, it's a collection of short stories, poems and vignettes that draw from crime, noir, police procedural and spy fiction and something less definable yet mystifyingly intimate. The stories in particular are impressive, moving with a kind of relentless energy and fun and skirting genre pastiche without becoming cartoonish. The vignettes and poems allow for changes of pace between the intensity of the Fleminglike/Chandleresque stories. The strangeness, I suppose, is in the juxtaposition of styles, and however perplexing these choices are, the whole works better as a sum than the parts would alone. There's a kind of bipolar spirit running like electricity beneath the rollercoaster ups and downs of this distinctive and original carnival ride.

Here's some biographical stuff:

K. S. Brooks is an award-winning novelist, photographer and poet.

Ms. Brooks’ first novel, Lust for Danger, won her Honorable Mention in the Jada Press Book of the Year Awards as well as a spot in the “Next Big Thing” tent at the Baltimore Book Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. Since then, The Kiss of Night (2010) and Night Undone (2011) have been published by Cambridge Books. Ms. Brooks has also written 3 children's books, also published by Cambridge Books: The Mighty Oak and Me (2009), Postcards from Mr. Pish (2010) and Mr. Pish's Woodland Adventure (2011).

Her feature articles, poetry, and photography have appeared in magazines, newspapers, books and other publications both in the U.S. and abroad.

In the serenity of her new surroundings in Washington State, Ms. Brooks now devotes her time to writing action-adventure thrillers, romantic suspense novels, and children’s books which promote outdoor learning and literacy.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Tilting At Windmills

Of course, this isn't all going to be about me and my introspective self, it's going to be about writing, too... and publishing... and books... and writers and readers, and the overlaps therein. Oh, and sex. Okay, maybe not sex, unless you consider language sexy, in which case, you have my blessing.

Earlier I was talking about the two trips I took across the continent of North America, coast to coast, so to speak. This second time, I saw plenty of changes, not least (in a physical sense) the incredible number of wind farms that had sprouted most everywhere the land lay flat and the air moved fast. Thinking about all this, I came across the following:

Similar thoughts had crossed my own mind, but that last panel is genius. Anyway, you gotta love the Web and I couldn't have asked for better timing. And, bonus, it's always worth a plug for the incomparable xkcd.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.